5 Ways Negan From 'The Walking Dead' Is Just Like Uncle Sam

Characters on TV often mirror political and cultural issues, and the undertones are easy to spot. That couldn't be more evident than with the latest villain on The Walking Dead, the charismatic psychopath Negan, played spectacularly by Jeffery Dean Morgan.

The past couple of seasons, it's become increasingly difficult to avoid seeing Negan as Uncle Sam and the federal government. Here are five ways that prove it.

Spoiler Alert: Stop reading now if you don't want the veil lifted.

1| Taxation

Honestly, does anyone feel patriotic or thrilled when April 15th rolls around? Of course not --- nobody does. The more money you make the more Uncle Sam takes, and there isn't any way around it (unless you run a major corporation or have tax shelters set up by a bang-up accountant).

It's no surprise once the calm settles in a dystopian zombie apocalypse world, some dude would seize power of what's left and try to take as much as he can. Negan broke it down for the show's protagonist Rick Grimes in his brilliantly written monologue in last season's finale:

Give me your sh**... or I will kill you. Today was career day. We invested in a lot, so you would know who I am and what I can do. You work for me now. You have sh**, you give it to me. That's your job. Now, I know that is a mighty big, nasty pill to swallow, but swallow it you most certainly will. You ruled the roost. You built something. You thought you were safe. I get it. But the word is out. You are not safe. Not even close. In fact, you are pegged, more pegged if you don't do what I want. And what I want is half your sh**.

No matter how much you hate it, you can't fight city hall, and you sure can't take on Negan by yourself --- that's just the way it is.

2| Theft Is Not Tolerated

In America today, stealing large amounts of money often earns longer prison sentences than violent crimes. While perhaps not as harsh as punishments delivered by the barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat-wielding bad guy, the feds don't care who you are --- if you owe them money, they will come for you. Just ask Wesley Snipes or Martha Stewart.

Uncle Sam will drop the hammer on you if you take what he thinks is his. Similarly, Negan will drop Lucille on your head if you cross him in any way. In his words:

You don't really think that you were gonna get through this without being punished, now, did you? I don't want to kill you people. Just want to make that clear from the get-go. I want you to work for me. You can't do that if you're dead, now, can you?

3| I Want You!

The iconic stars-and-stripes-clad Uncle Sam recruitment poster has been used over the decades as a patriotic call to duty. A volunteer army has long been a tradition in America and helped us to avoid another draft, something nobody wants to see. When stuff really hits the fan, it'll be something to watch for because that patriotic call can become a frightening threat.

Once Negan had fan favorite Daryl in his custody, he laid out his options for service in no uncertain terms:

I don't think you get it yet. So I'm gonna break it down for you. You get three choices. One. You wind up on the spike, and you work for me as a dead man. Two. You get out of your cell, you work for points, but you're gonna wish you were dead. Or three. You work for me. You get yourself a brand new pair of shoes, and you live like a king! The choices seem pretty obvious. You should know, there is no door number four. This is it. This is the only way.

For as much as Uncle Sam wants us to feel like we have a choice in the matter, he will come calling if things go sideways. Negan likewise wants to make his group, "The Saviors," feel like they are living it up. But the truth is, he owns them.

4| It's All Good If You Follow the Rules

Things are pretty simple in America, keep your head down, pay your taxes, produce for society and the feds will leave you alone. At least that's what they want you to think. The truth is, the average person could be committing at least three felonies a day and not even know it. All it takes is the wrong person noticing to completely upend your life.

The rules are pretty similar for Negan. You produce, you keep your head down, say please and thank you and, for the most part, things will be pretty smooth. Not enjoyable, but not deadly. The only problem is it won't take much to slip up and if the wrong person catches you, you might end up with a hot iron to the face or on the business end of Lucille. According to Negan:

There are rules for a reason. Nothing matters if your dead.

5| Ingenuity and Talent Is Rewarded

Despite all the ways the government has invented to entangle itself in our daily lives, the American Dream lives on. If you work hard, you can get ahead and make a difference --- without fear of Lucille hanging over you.

While Negan owns you and there is no escaping that fact, he too rewards hard work. In one episode, Spencer tries to make an end run around Rick and take power of Alexandria, the settlement where Rick's people live. Despite their differences, Negan respects Rick's work ethic and recognizes Spencer's laziness. He responds accordingly:

You know, I'm thinking, Spencer. I'm thinking how Rick threatened to kill me, how he clearly hates my guts. But he is out there right now, gathering sh** for me to make sure I don't hurt any of the fine people that live here. He is swallowing his hate and getting sh** done. That takes guts. And then there's you. The guy who waited for Rick to be gone so he could sneak over and talk to me to get me to do his dirty work, so he could take Rick's place. So I got to ask, if you wanna take over, why not just kill Rick yourself and just take over?

This encounter leads to Spencer's disembowelment and an example made for the rest of the citizens of Alexandria. In recent episodes, Negan has taken a shine to Eugene, an odd duck often on the outside looking in with Rick's group.

Negan finds out about Eugene's talent for making bullets and rewards him with a new life where he can play all the video games he wants, eat good food and enjoy the company of beautiful women. What Negan has in mind for Eugene's talents hasn't fully been revealed, but you can be sure it will have deadly results.

We've finally heard some news on the migrant caravan. Some of the migrants have given up and gone back home, but some are still there waiting at the border. A leader representing the group has decided to step forward, and he's made out a list of... demands. Remember when I said back in October that this caravan was originally formed as a Leftist act against the Honduran government by people with ties to Venezuela and Cuba? Well what do you know… wait until you hear who this guy is.

Alfonso Guerrero personally walked into the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana, Mexico with a list of demands from the caravan. Get a load of this. The caravan is demanding that if they're not granted immediate asylum they want the following:

Fifty thousand dollars in cash for every caravan member (which would be a total of tens of millions).

The immediate removal of all U.S. economic and military assets in Honduras.

Failure to comply to these demands will result in the caravan continuing to try and penetrate the U.S. border.

I mean, if you're trying to appear like some grassroots movement for migrants that are just escaping the dangers of their own country, you might want to - oh I don't know - tone down the crazy Leftist freedom fighter schtick. I'm just saying. Demanding millions of dollars AND the removal of the U.S. military from Honduras kinda just screams, "Hey check me out. I'm a Marxist terrorist." It would have been basically the same thing if he just charged up to the embassy wearing a beret and shouted "Viva la Revolution!!" while firing off an RPG.

Well, it turns out this isn't the first time Mr Guerrero has tried to claim asylum. Back in 1987 he claimed asylum in Mexico after being suspected by the Honduran and U.S. government for - wait for it - left wing terrorism… Jeez, you know you really can't make this stuff up. This is INSANE. Here's the story…

This is ridiculous. Can we all now agree that this entire charade is a fraudulent scam?

In 1987 Honduras was ground zero for U.S. and Soviet proxy forces fighting the Cold War. The Contra rebels were actually based there, and leftists terrorists would sometimes carry out operations in the country in response. On August 8th a bomb was thrown into the China Palace restaurant, just a few miles from the U.S. military base in Honduras. Six American soldiers were injured in the blast. Alfonso Guerrero was the primary suspect. He escaped to Mexico and claimed asylum. The Reagan Administration charged the Mexican government for quote "harboring a terrorist" for granting Guerrero protection.

But all the caravan wants is a better life in the United States… oh and millions of dollars AND a list of political demands for their home country. This is ridiculous. Can we all now agree that this entire charade is a fraudulent scam? This is a Leftist political stunt. It has been since the very beginning.

Here's an incident that you won't hear about anywhere else. It doesn't fit the mainstream media's transgender narrative, their fairy tale of infinite genders, where any criticism is viewed as transphobic and taboo and certainly not something that the majority of Americans think or feel.

Last week, in West Point, Virginia, a high school French teacher named Peter Vlaming was fired after a five-and-a-half hour hearing that centered on his refusal to use a transgender student's specific gender pronouns. Vlaming said that doing so violated his religious beliefs.

Tolerance is a two-way street. Unfortunately, tolerance on the part of the school division has been noticeably absent. It chose to impose its own orthodoxy on Mr. Vlaming and fired him because he didn't relinquish his rights protected by the First Amendment.

School administrators fired Vlaming "due to this insubordination and repeated refusal to comply with directives made to him by multiple WPPS administrators."

The school justified the firing by pointing to a set of policies aimed at curbing misgendering of transgender students.

Vlaming's lawyer disputed this, saying that the policies include no such mention of transgenderism, adding that:

My client respects the rights of all students, including this student's rights; he simply asked that his rights be respected as well. Unfortunately, the school division refused to consider any solutions that would respect the freedoms of everyone involved.

There is a ray of hope in all of this, though. The students. A group of students from the school immediately staged a walkout in protest of Vlaming's firing.

One student told reporters:

I feel like everyone should have the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion as well.

Students lined up outside the school with signs that said, "Free Vlam." Another included a quote from Ben Shapiro: "Facts don't care about your feelings." Another read "You can't impose delusion onto us."

Whether it's a 'War on Christmas' or just progressivism run amok, the song 'Baby It's Cold Outside' has been firmly in the crosshairs this holiday season. Here are just a few of the headlines making the rounds:

The left might think they are woke and on the right side of history in the wake of the #MeToo movement — but how shocked do you think they'd be if they knew Glenn beat them to the punch over a decade ago? Don't believe me? Take a listen to this clip from our audio vault from 2008.

Christmas has arrived early for mainstream media. They have their first sentencing of a major player in President Trump's inner circle. Yesterday, Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen was sentenced by a federal judge in Manhattan. How did it come to this and how did Cohen explain himself to the judge? We start there next…

President Trump's former attorney, 52-year-old Michael Cohen, is going to jail. Well, it will probably be one of those federal prison camps with a dorm that's more like a college campus. But he's going to be locked up. A federal judge sentenced him to three years in prison for financial crimes, and two months for lying to Congress. He also ordered Cohen to pay $2 million in financial penalties. The judge called Cohen's misdeeds a "veritable smorgasbord of criminal conduct."

As a lawyer, Mr. Cohen should have known better. While Mr. Cohen is taking steps to mitigate his criminal conduct by pleading guilty and volunteering useful information to prosecutors, that does not wipe the slate clean.

Cohen pled guilty in August to eight criminal charges in two different cases. One brought by special counsel Robert Muller for Cohen's lying to Congress about a potential Trump Tower project in Moscow. The second was for bank-fraud, tax, and campaign finance violations brought by federal prosecutors in New York.

President Trump said recently that Cohen has simply been lying to get a reduced sentence for crimes that have nothing to do with him. Cohen was very emotional as he apologized to the judge, saying:

It was my own weakness and a blind loyalty to this man that led me to choose a path of darkness over light. Time and time again I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds rather than to listen to my own inner voice and my moral compass.

The left thinks that Cohen's sentencing marks the beginning of the end for Trump's presidency. They may be ultimately disappointed in that regard. But this does intensify the long national nightmare of the Muller investigation that seems to have no end in sight.